The day Ingrid Stone wrote her very first letter of complaint is ingrained on her memory.

It was penned after a trip to the funfair in Torquay, during which the then eight-year-old was entranced not by the bumper cars or candyfloss, but by a small, brown teddy bear hanging behind the shooting range.

Sadly, the day was to prove rather a let-down for Ingrid and her grandparents, with whom she was enjoying a summer break.

Taking on bad service one complaint at a time, Ingrid has blagged free flights, hotel stays and hundreds of pounds out of companies who have let her down

As a prize for his sharp-shooting, Ingrid’s grandfather was handed not the cuddly toy she hoped for, but a small and — decidedly grubby — plastic doll.

Later that afternoon, Ingrid returned to her hotel room and painstakingly wrote out a letter.

The scrawling pencil handwriting was untidy and the punctuation a little shaky, but there could be no doubt that the writer was very unhappy with the prize she had received.

‘Dear Sirs,’ it read, ‘When I was at the fair I won a prize and it was a doll which was very dirty and I think you should have better prizes than that. My grandpa tried very hard to win a prize for me and I was disappointed to get such a dirty doll . . . I hope you will reply to this letter.’

Now 40, Ingrid recalls her horror on returning the next day with her grandparents to deliver the letter, only to discover the fair had already packed up and left.

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‘I was very upset,’ says Ingrid, who grew up in Warwickshire and Buckinghamshire. ‘I really did want that nice shiny teddy bear.’

The letter was the start of what’s become a one-woman campaign against poor service — which has seen Ingrid become one of the most successful complainers in Britain.

Over the years the mother-of-one has fired off hundreds of complaint letters — she eschews email, preferring traditional letters, signed and personally addressed — to companies as diverse as Apple (a faulty MacBook), British Airways (delayed flights), Dorset Cereals (not enough dates in its muesli) and even the makers of a brand of fly paper that wasn’t sticky enough to trap its victims.

The start of a career in complaining: Ingrid penned this letter when she was eight after receiving a dud prize at a village funfair, and hasn't stopped complaining ever since

‘My father and my grandfather have always been people who believe very strongly in saying what you think and I think I must have inherited some of those genes,’ says Ingrid, whose father Irving, a solicitor, and writer mother Valerie divorced when she was three.

She honed her talent while working as a PA in her 20s, after her boss asked her to pen a couple of letters on his behalf.

Whether you think she’s a consumer champion or Britain’s biggest moaner, one thing is certain: Ingrid Stone is very good at complaining.

‘I still complain about just about anything, but it has to be with good reason,’ says Ingrid. ‘It has to be truthful; I think it’s totally wrong to do it just to get something out of it. It’s not about getting freebies, it’s about knowing the complaint has been taken seriously.

‘I think if you are dissatisfied, don’t suffer in silence. We are very good in this country at grumbling, but a lot of the time people don’t take it any further, they won’t write a letter.

But I believe in standing up for yourself and I think consumers have a right taken seriously.’

There is no doubt that Ingrid, who lives with her husband, journalist Will Green, 43, and daughter Ruby, three, in Queen’s Park, North-West London, has been taken seriously by the companies she has targeted.

There’s the £350 she was sent by electronics company Sony to cover repairs on a television that broke when it had just exceeded its warranty, a refund on some Aquafresh dental tape after she complained its floss was suitable only for pulling teeth out, and the free case of cocoa she received after complaining to one company a jar that had gone off reminded her of ‘dental patients with halitosis’.

The tagline of Igrid’s blog about her complaints reads: ‘There’s always something to complain about.’ Indeed, even the happiest day of her life, her 2007 wedding to Will, provided fodder for Ingrid’s hobby.

When an expensive wedding gift arrived two months late and turned out to be the wrong item, her scathing letter to Selfridges resulted in £300 worth of vouchers winging their way through the post to her.

She has even hauled company bosses — including British Airways’ Willie Walsh and Virgin supremo Richard Branson — over the coals.

Last October Ingrid got in touch with Philip Clarke, chief executive of supermarket giant Tesco. She addressed her letter to him directly, penning his name by hand, as she does to make her letters more personal.

Payback: Some of Ingrid's best freebies sent to her as a result of her well-worded complaints

‘I recently purchased a 25-pack of your Tesco Party! pearlised balloons. The colours are lovely and they were absolutely perfect for the Bollywood-themed party I put on in a friend’s garden,’ she wrote.

‘That delight, however, was short-lived. Five out of the twenty-five pack of balloons exploded (enclosed) which was most upsetting for the children present. One of the infants was crying.

‘I trust your Tesco own-brand condoms are more reliable (let’s hope they are of the Tesco Extra ilk rather than “Every little helps”). As it is, your balloons were something of a let down.’

The response that came back, from Mr Clarke’s office, was effusive in apology, assuring Ingrid the matter had been taken up with the technical team, thanking her for bringing the matter to the chief executive’s attention and enclosing a £35 Tesco Moneycard.

Not a bad response to a complaint about a pack of balloons.

But it’s got nothing on Ingrid’s best success story, which came after directing a letter to British Airways boss Willie Walsh, about five years ago.

Ingrid was working for ITV at the time, and with a team of colleagues was flying from Heathrow to Cannes for an event, but their flight was hit by delays.

‘Everything that could go wrong, went wrong,’ says Ingrid. ‘There were two sets of delays and my bag went missing.’

THE SIX SECRETS TO GETTING RESULTS WHEN COMPLAINING

1. Always complain in writing and keep a copy, so you have a record of what you’ve said.

2.
Apply the 60-minute rule. Try to write down all the details of your
grievance within an hour of the experience to ensure you get all the
details.

3. Aim high.
Contact the managing director or chief executive. You might not get a
response from them, but your complaint will be treated seriously and
handed to someone with proper authority.

4.
Be polite. There is nothing to be gained by putting the back up of the
person you are complaining to. Polite and irritated, rather than a rude
and angry tone, is more likely to achieve a positive outcome to your
letter.

5. Be clear. A
concise but detailed account will help whoever is dealing with your
complaint. If it was a bad journey include tickets if possible. Dates
and times, and if relevant, order numbers are all helpful.

6. Adopt a light approach. Humour can get you a long way — even managing directors like to see the funny side of bad situation

With a dramatic flourish — the well-spoken brunette likes to pepper her letters with humour and references to classic literature — she compared the baggage hall at Heathrow with Dante’s Inferno.

‘I didn’t need to embellish too much, it was quite dramatic anyway,’ says Ingrid. ‘By the time we reached Cannes our booked transport had left without us, and when we reached the hotel, eight hours late, someone else was sleeping in my bed.’

The result of her complaint? A set of return business class tickets to anywhere in Europe.

‘I was totally triumphant,’ says Ingrid. ‘The response came from Willie Walsh himself, which I never expected. The first thing I did was ring his office and say thank you.

‘When something is cancelled or delayed you feel slightly helpless, so it made me feel quite proud to do something and get a response.’

Virgin boss Richard Branson was also on the receiving end of Ingrid’s ire after her train from London to Preston was delayed. In response he sent her vouchers — and a signed copy of his autobiography.

If her passion for moaning showed any sign of flagging, then the birth of baby Ruby three years ago ushered in a ‘whole new genre’ of complaints.

When baby bottles started squirting milk into the air rather than little Ruby’s mouth, Ingrid was quick to sit down and fire off another letter.

The response was not in the form of free baby bottles, but a personal call from the manufacturer’s medical team to apologise and talk her through problems she was having.

Friends have been quick to capitalise on Ingrid’s talent for complaining.

She recently wrote a letter of complaint to a well-known firm of auctioneers on behalf of a friend who had been left with fees that were more than the value of the goods he had been selling.

The result? A full rebate on all fees.

Her talent for complaining has even landed her a book deal — Letters Of A Dissatisfied Woman, a compilation of her best letters and top tips, will be published later this year.

But there is one person who is not quite so impressed by Ingrid’s penchant for kicking up a fuss — her mortified husband.

‘I
think he still gets a bit embarrassed by it,’ says Ingrid, who insists
she is really quite shy and retiring, despite her strident complaining.

‘He’s
not the complaining sort. In the beginning, if I complained about
something in a restaurant, if a steak was like a piece of old boot, he
would be totally horrified.’

‘One time I wrote a complaint letter on his behalf — he was on a postgraduate course in journalism, was doing a shorthand exam and had chosen just the right pen — but it didn’t work. So I complained to Pilot, the pen company, telling them it was the pen equivalent of a Reliant Robin.

‘A few days later this big Jiffy bag arrived on the communal post table in our block of flats. It was full of pens — ball pens, fine liners, fluorescent markers, silver decorative pens.

‘I think he’s resigned to it now. If I say I’m going to complain I just get a faint raise of the eyebrow as if to say “not again”.’

While Ingrid laughs about her hobby, it is clear she takes it very seriously. ‘On an economic level I think it’s really very important,’ she says. ‘As consumers, people don’t have the money to spend on bad services and products, they just can’t afford to, and business can’t afford to have bad services and products, because we will just stop using them.

‘I also have a 60-minute rule,’ says Ingrid. ‘I try to write down my grievances within 60 minutes of the incident happening; that way the detail is clear.’

It all sounds so easy. But Ingrid’s formula doesn’t always yield results.

‘My most dismal failure was easyJet,’ she says. ‘It was a few years ago and I was flying to Amsterdam for the weekend, the flight was delayed and I wasn’t expecting haute cuisine, but the food . . . it was really expensive and I had a baguette, I think, with a few tiny pieces of cheese.

‘I wrote a letter saying the cheese slices would only satisfy a slightly peckish mouse but I heard absolutely nothing.’

Will she let that deter her if easyJet err again? ‘Oh no, I’m very stubborn, I don’t give up.’